Today, any public policy approach must include measures and metrics to guide choices. The difficulty is often around how to craft a common set of measures for vastly different projects. This is particularly true for joint-venture and public-private partnership projects (P3), where each project may have fundamentally different goals and be located in different communities [...]

Public-private partnerships, often called P3s, have proven in most cases to be beneficial to Virginia communities and to the public at large. However, the fourth “P”—“pitfalls”—do exist for these popular types of agreements. Two recent examples of how these kinds of projects can go awry are described below, along with several key “lessons learned” that [...]

Robert A. Stalzer is the deputy county executive of Fairfax County, Va. Appointed in June 2000, he has more than 30 years of local government experience. In his cur- rent position he is responsible for several key programs and services, including public works and environmental services, planning and zoning, community revitalization, transportation, and code compliance. [...]

Charlotte Franklin is the deputy coordinator for Arlington County’s Office of Emergency Management. She is responsible for partnership, resiliency, and business-readiness programs, including business preparedness, public/private recovery-resource partnerships, and business resiliency and resumption after a disaster. Previously, she served as director for the business investment group in the county’s economic development office, where her main [...]

Neil Morgan works with Virginia Tech’s Center for Organi- zational and Technological Advancement (COTA) as a senior COTA fellow and is based in Roanoke, Va. He is also an adjunct instructor for Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP). After an early career as a government and history teacher, Morgan spent most of [...]